“Yeah. Okay,” Darryl said, anxious to please his new friend. They cut the cards.
“Wow! An ace! Too bad, Darryl. I beatcha this time. I'll tell you what. Let's go two out of three, okay?” The other boy looked relieved as they cut the cards again. Darryl lost all three times. “A run of bad luck. Tough luck.” He had Darryl perform a few menial tasks and then he loaned him some of his comic books and they said good-bye. He was already learning how to build that initial foundation of trust.
Eventually he would get Darryl's mom and dad to let the boy go with him on a fishing trip. They would be gone overnight. He would play cards with the boy again. Another game of slave. He already had sent away for some high-heeled shoes he had seen in a magazine, even before he'd met Darryl. He had swiped some lipstick and a pair of old nylons. He fantasized how Darryl would look from behind in the women's hosiery and high-heeled shoes. How he would look naked from the rear. Long hair and a small butt like a girl's. He would make this sissy be his sister for the night. It filled him with a hot surge of desire that he couldn't explain, and he began to masturbate uncontrollably at the thought of such an experience. This sick, twisted child on his way to manhood.
Buckhead
The woman was hardly recognizable. As a woman, that is. She was bruised playdough. A lumpy, bloody, badly formed and grossly misshapen caricature of a human being. The face distorted, cruelly out of sync, as if an uncoordinated child had taken clay and tried to approximate the shape of a human head. Her name appeared below her face and it said, simply, VICTIM.
“Another victim of violent crime,” a woman's professional voice spoke from the speakers, “and the men who did this never served a night in jail."
The unrecognizable face dissolved with the audience reaction and a poorly lit sound bite of what appeared to be a group of paramedics and police carrying something into a waiting ambulance. Freeze frame on a cluster of hands shoving the body bag in.
“Another gangbanger rape-murder in the ghetto. The victim was a thirteen-year-old girl."
The next footage was familiar to everyone within a hundred-mile radius of Buckhead who owned a television set: the steep hillside at Buckhead Park in the early dawn. The place where some boys passing by on their bicycles had spotted the body of Tina Hoyt. The shot was too far away to show anything, even though the crew had tried for bloodstains. The Hoyt woman had already been moved by the time the Channel 4 people came on the scene, unfortunately. But in some ways it was even spookier NOT to have the shot of the body being carried off.
“The grisly scene of the park in early morning. The place where children discovered a woman's body and it proved to be that of Buckhead political activist Tina Hoyt. Abducted, Murdered. Stabbed with an icepick ... and then raped."
A switcher, two women, one of whom was the director, and an engineer all looked up at the on-air monitor as the graphic came up. It said sexual Attacks Continue, and the words moved on a crawl as Ginger narrated the voiceover, “Sexual attacks continue. Following an ongoing investigation by Detectives Marv Peletier and T.J. Fay of the Sex-Crimes Section of the Buckhead Police Department."
“That's wrong,” somebody said as they watched the blow-up of the news clipping from the Gazette.
“Three additional felony charges including one count of rape, one count of felonious restraint, and one count of sodomy have been issued against Wade Weiss of South Buckhead. The new charges involve sexual assault against a twenty-two-year-old Madison-burg woman in the four hundred block of Tower Lane.
“Weiss had been arrested last month following the sexual assault of a woman and her infant daughter, who were forced behind a building in South Buckhead. Weiss had been charged with rape, molestation, sodomy, and kidnapping in connection with the original case, but due to improper arrest procedures was able to obtain release by posting a reduced bail, police said."
The small studio audience made noises of disapproval.
“Wait. Wait. Listen."
The people in the booth watched the screen wipe the graphic bringing Ginger Stone's face to the screen in a medium close-up.
“Move in, two,” the woman's voice said into the floor headsets. “And three,” the switcher beside her.
“We've got lots more.” Ginger Stone said, continuing to read as the next graphic filled the screen.
“Vaughan Andrews, thirty-one, told investigating police that he tried to kill his wife, LaDonna, by putting infected specimens of diseased cadavers into her food and drink. Andrews admitted he had been attempting to murder his wife for the last six months, during which time he obtained serum with hepatitis virus, AIDS virus, and other toxic substances, which he used to infect his wife. Mrs. Andrews was subsequently hospitalized with a severe case of serum hepatitis, authorities said. Vaughan Andrews told investigators he had heard about copy-cat killers and it had given him the idea of using specimens he stole from the Buckhead Morgue, where he had been employed since last February. Andrews admitted that he was attempting to copy serial killer Donald Harvey, who was convicted of killing twenty-five persons in Ohio."
Murmurs from the studio audience.
“Well, we have one of the leading experts on serial murder in the United States right here in Buckhead, the famous Jack Eichord of Buckhead Station, who single-handedly solved the Dr. Demented, Lonely Hearts, and Gravedigger cases, among other infamous crimes. And perhaps he'll be able to help us understand this rash of violent crime,” Ginger said, shaking her head.
“Look at this,” she continued as the screen flashed a graphic. “Here's a nice little item for every Buckhead motorist. If somebody tailgates you or cuts in front of you, or you just don't like the color of their car, and you're driving down the boulevard, you just push this and strafe their car with simulated machine-gun fire.” Laughter. “Nice healthy way to get rid of those mounting hostilities."
The audience hooted as the noise of the toy machine gun punctuated her comments.
For more times than he cared to admit to himself Jack Eichord was being manipulated. By his fearless leader at Buckhead Station, that bastion of law enforcement the captain, by MacTuff and all who sailed aboard, and by the fickle middle finger of unruly fate.
Channel 4 and the taping of one of “those” talk shows. Ginger Stone all coiffed and propped and prompted, ready for the winking red-eyed monster that bestows fame, fortune, or any number of negatives from calumniation to sudden death. Fucking TV. McLuhan's cool medium of the eyeball massage. The tribal communicator.
Somebody high up in the task force had fixed it in their head that Jack was a perfect buffer between The Press and the blues. On too many occasions he'd found himself gliding across the screen in his television tapdance. A circumlocution of bullshit designed to keep the lid on potentially volatile situations.
But the lid was off. Violence was a bloodthreat that had finally pounded on the door of even the swankiest suburban homes. People were scared. Gangs from the eastern and western inner cities, fueled by dope and hyped by the promise of virgin sales markets, had pushed inward toward the soft American heartland and its vulnerable underbelly.
Somebody, to top it all off, had abducted the famous feminist Tina Hoyt right out in front of Buckhead Christian. Taken her out to the park, maybe played with her awhile, then shoved an icepick through her ear and into her brain. He'd then submitted her lifeless body to one final degradation, according to the sperm traces in the victim's mouth.